Australia's connection speeds are beginning to pick up, particularly around broadband and mobile connectivity, according to the latest State of the Internet Report.

The Akamai Technologies report for the second quarter of 2014 showed that Australia's average connection speed for the period was 7.1Mbps, an 18 percent increase quarter over quarter and a 46 percent increase year on year. This lifted Australia's ranking to 41st position globally in terms of average connection speeds, up one position from the previous quarter. The global average connection speed was at 4.6Mbps, exceeding the 4Mbps "broadband" threshold for the first time. Leading this category continued to be South Korea, which had an average connection speed of 24.6Mbps.

"The number of 'firsts' we're seeing in the Second Quarter 2014 State of the Internet Report make this a particularly interesting quarter," said David Belson, editor of the report.

Similarly, Australia's peak connection speed was recorded at 36.8Mbps. This represented a 16 percent increase quarter over quarter and a 27 percent increase year on year. This brought Australia's ranking from 39th in the first quarter of 2014 to 40th place globally in terms of average peak connection.

However, the most noticeable difference for Australia was the improvement in broadband connectivity, where speeds are above 4Mbps. Australia's global ranking moved up five spots from the previous quarter to 44th position. The percentage of broadband connectivity was recorded at 65 percent, an 18 percent increase quarter on quarter, and a 61 percent increase year on year.

Additionally, high broadband connectivity, where speeds are above 10Mbps, was 15 percent in Australia, up 45 percent quarter on quarter, and on a year-on-year basis, it was up 202 percent. But in global terms of high broadband, Australia remained in 38th place.

At the same time, the report highlighted that Australia was the only country that had mobile connection speeds above 100Mbps, which was two times faster than Japan, which had the next highest average peak mobile connection speed. The average peak mobile connection speeds in Australia were recorded at 108Mbps, while the lowest was recorded in Vietnam at 4.7Mbps.

As for how Australia ranked in terms of 4K readiness, it is in 35th position globally, down one position compared to the previous quarter. The percentage of connectivity recorded above 15Mbps in Australia was 6.7 percent, up 53 percent quarter on quarter. On a year-on-year basis, changes saw a 221 percent increase in Australia compared to the same period in 2013.

The report also showed, for the first time in the history of the State of the Internet Report, that the global unique IP address count declined quarter over quarter by a nominal 0.9 percent; however, this was 4.8 percent more than the same time last year. While only two of the top 10 countries, Brazil and Japan, saw IP address counts increase from the first quarter, 46 percent of all countries experienced quarter-over-quarter increases in unique IPv4 address counts, with 26 countries growing by 10 percent or more.

"Though even a minimal quarter-to-quarter decline is unusual in the history of this report, we see no reason for concern," said Belson. "It may be due to providers working to conserve limited IPv4 address space, or likely was a result of increased IPv6 connectivity and adoption among leading network providers. That said, globally, 69 percent of countries and regions still showed year-over-year increases in unique IPv4 address counts."

The State of the Internet Report also looked into security online. It found that Australia and New Zealand experienced less than 0.1 percent of attack traffic during Q2 2014.

Akamai's observations also found that China remained in the top slot of where observed attack traffic originated, with 43 percent. Indonesia held the second position, responsible for 15 percent of observed attacks, doubling the levels seen during the last quarter. This was closely followed by the United States, which accounted for 13 percent of attack traffic. Furthermore, 70 percent of attack traffic originated from the Asia-Pacific region, while the lowest volume of 0.3 percent was observed to originate from Africa.

During the second quarter, the Asia-Pacific region saw a 23 percent reduction — the largest decline — in attacks from a high of 87 attacks in the first quarter to 67 in the second quarter. There were also fewer reports of global DDoS attacks, highlighted by the 15 percent year-over-year drop.

Akamai highlighted that for only the third time in the history of the report, Port 445 (Microsoft-DS) fell to become the second most targeted by attackers. Port 80 (WWW/HTTP) took the lead in the second quarter, when its attack traffic nearly doubled to 15 percent, but was not the most targeted port among any of the top 10 countries or regions.

Thank You

By registering you become a member of the CBS Interactive family of sites and you have read and agree to the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Video Services Policy. You agree to receive updates, alerts and promotions from CBS and that CBS may share information about you with our marketing partners so that they may contact you by email or otherwise about their products or services.
You will also receive a complimentary subscription to the ZDNet's Tech Update Today and ZDNet Announcement newsletters. You may unsubscribe from these newsletters at any time.